quoting me
>>... The 'crisis' of late 1997 turned out to be episodic rather than
>> systemic.
>
>What does that mean? The SACP were, actually, right about global (and
>local, were they brave enough to say it) "overaccumulation,"
>having just read the May-June 1998 NLR.
I suppose I meant that the crisis of late 1997 turned out not to be the world-shattering disaster that it was widely billed as. Yes, by all means 'over-accumulation', but the 'crisis of over-accumulation' that returned in the 1970s has been with us ever since, and a 'permanent crisis' is an oxymoron. You need to ask how the capitalists avoided collapse - I would suggest principally through the defeat of the working class, as you yourself have eloquently described in Zimbabwe and SA.
>One of the classic ways out
>of a systematic overaccumulation crisis--which by the way has been
>apparent here for about three decades--is geographical displacement.
>That helps explain the resurgent subimperialism.
Good point. I agree.
>
>> Pointedly, South African capital took advantage of the period
>> 1994-8 to buy into ...
>
>Sure, just like they did from 1990-92, and then it proved largely
>unsustainable in those early mining, banking and retail circuits, so
>expansion slowed, then picked up a tiny bit again during the late
>1990s under conditions of dramatically increased subsidies from
>Pretoria, and less local competition (fading thanks to austerity at
>home). It's still not in the least a stable, productive accumulation
>model anywhere I've seen up-continent from Jo'burg, and in fact
>boils down, really, just to extraction industries, tourism, commerce
>and finance.
(Sounds suspiciously like the British economy, then, except that at least Southern Africa has extractive industries.) I'm all for emphasising the limitations of capitalist accumulation, but they only make any sense alongside an estimation of its productive potential. The analysis that insists on a disaster when the picture is mixed can end up being simply demoralising.
>
>> ... As South Africa's capitalists have basked in the reflected
>> glory of the ANC's government...
>
>No, as they try to ESCAPE the stagnant market of SA, which thanks to
>the glory of exchange-control liberalisation, was part of the
>ANC-NationalParty power-transfer deal, ...
Well, I don't suppose they would have found it quite so easy to penetrate the frontline states if Botha were still in power.
And I don't suppose that SA capitalists will float off from their national base completely, any more than British capitalists' global ventures led them to abandon their commitment to British military firepower.
All the best -- James Heartfield
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